


Apocalypse Compounded

by afrakaday



Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrakaday/pseuds/afrakaday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A problem on the tylium refinery ship puts the entire Fleet in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apocalypse Compounded

**Author's Note:**

> **Spoilers:** through The Captain’s Hand  
>  **Warnings:** character death, graphic sex  
>  **Prompt:** 95\. Battlestar Galactica 2003 - Adama/Roslin - We didn't quite contain the zombie plague ship in time (for the 2012 Zombie Fest at [Zombi-fic-ation](http://zombi-fic-ation.livejournal.com))  
> 

_Hitei Khan, 260 days after the Fall of the Colonies_

Hank brushed debris from his coveralls and sighed as his eyes scanned the control panel. The damn sally port to the airlock was jammed again, and he had a ship’s worth of refuse to send out into space.

He looked over the console’s activity log. Looked like the last airlock ejection was a corpse. Hank had heard about the accident; a boom lowered unexpectedly, hitting the kid in the head. Kid fell off the bridge into a vat of unrefined tylium and drowned. Poor Dougie should have gotten a proper send-off, complete with a priest or priestess offering prayers and a funeral repast for the mourners. But with the Daru Mozu indefinitely offline thanks to the frakking cylon-loving Demand Peace movement, there was no rest for the weary on the Fleet’s only operational tylium refinery ship.

Retrieving a wrench from his toolbelt, Hank removed the cover of the control panel so he could access the override on the airlock’s inner doors and see what the hell the problem was.

The doors opened with a hydraulic hiss and Hank shoved the rolling dumpsters into the airlock, tilting them on their sides so he could empty the trash out of them. In his concentration on his task, Hank barely saw Dougie approach him.

Gray-green skin hung off his formerly youthful face, though he retained most of his shock of straight black hair. A putrid smell, far worse than the trash he’d been emptying, filled the airlock. As it drew closer, Hank could see that the back of his skull was crushed in.

Hank checked his toolbelt for the oversized wrench, and with a sinking heart realized he’d left it on the console. He held up his hands in a silent but futile plea for mercy as Dougie bared his teeth, which looked sharper than they had ever had in life. He fell to the ground, atop the bags of waste, as Dougie feasted on his flesh, tearing chunks of Hank’s soft belly and broad chest before turning to his face.

Once the lifeforce left Hank, the Dougie-thing wandered out the open sally port door and into the heart of the ship.

Hours later, Hank began to stir.

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Ward Room_

“So what you’re telling me, gentlemen, is that we don’t even have enough tylium on hand for the entire Fleet to make a single jump, and the only functional refinery ship hasn’t been in contact with ships attempting to refuel for the past twenty-four hours?” President Roslin threw the dismal fuel report onto the table in disgust as Tory sneered on her boss’s behalf. “Unacceptable. You’ve gotta board that ship and find out what the hell is going on.”

Admiral Adama glared at her. “We’re still assessing the tactical situation.”

“The tactical situation is that we have no tylium, yes?” She stepped toward him, head held high.

Colonel Tigh cleared his throat. “It’s worse than that, Madam President.” Tigh looked to Adama, who nodded at Gaeta. “Mr. Gaeta, play the President the recording of the message we received from the Hitei Khan,” the Admiral instructed.

“Yes, sir,” he said nervously. He’d doubted his abilities when he first decoded the message, but he’d checked it twice before taking it to the Admiral, who confirmed the content with a grave expression. Gaeta clicked the play button and held his breath while the dire message filled the room.

 _”They’re...dead. But not! Dougie, with his head crushed in...got into the bunks. Survivors barricaded in the cockpit, we’re not letting anyone in or out. These_ things _, they’re everywhere on the ship, we didn’t notice at first and we can’t get to an airlock anymore...”_

The transmission ended abruptly, and dead silence followed the last crackly sounds of the recording. Tory finally broke it. “There’s a _zombie outbreak_ on the Hitei Khan?” she said incredulously.

Roslin’s eyes had grown wide, and she shook her head several times after the recording ended, sending auburn curls bouncing. “Well, did anyone respond to this? Who is in charge over there?”

“We weren’t able to reestablish contact,” Gaeta said. “That recording was received about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Admiral?” Roslin caught him in her steady gaze.

Adama sighed. “Normally I would say we should just destroy the ship. But...”

“...That ship is our only operational means of refining tylium,” Roslin finished for him. “Of course.”

“Mr. Gaeta, try to get in contact with the survivors aboard the Hitei Khan and find out what you can. Colonel, you have the CIC. It goes without saying that the content of that recording does not leave this room.”

The room’s inhabitants nodded, and Gaeta and Tigh filed out wordlessly. Tory followed them. “I’ll go with them, Madam President.”

“Yes, yes,” Roslin said, distracted. “I’ll be with the Admiral...discussing how to deal with this.” Tory gave a curt nod and a slight roll of her eyes as she ducked out the hatch.

“To my quarters, Madam President?” Adama asked, holding out his arm.

She nodded. “Yes, sir. Got any zombie lore in that book collection of yours?”

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Admiral Adama’s Quarters_

“Bill, how do we know this all isn’t some kind of Cylon trick?” Laura said, hands on her hips, pacing back and forth on Bill’s Gemenese rug. “We are sitting ducks without any tylium. It is _imperative_ that we get that ship back.”

“It may be a trick,” Bill admitted. “I wasn’t able to authenticate that message. But that could just be because they’ve got some civvies in the comm link on that ship who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“The Cylons engage in psychological subterfuge,” Laura remembered, thinking back to her encounter with the Leoben model. Lieutenant Thrace had certainly been shaken after her interrogation of the cylon model, and Laura hadn’t fared much better.

“It may also be a Cylon trick in the sense that Cylons are probably not susceptible to zombie infection,” Bill mused, trailing his finger over the spines of books on a shelf before locating a tome and taking the book over to his couch. “Zombies feast on living flesh, specifically brains," he read. He closed his eyes as he thought. "I think Cylons lack the organic material that appeals to zombies.”

Laura frowned; she hated the feeling of regret that washed over her as she realized they’d successfully destroyed an entire ship of potential zombie-killing allies. At the time it had seemed like such a good idea. “Leoben told me you were a Cylon,” she said instead.

Bill snorted, and he opened his eyes again to follow her pacing. “I’d hope you know by now that I’m not.”

“Baltar’s detector didn’t prove particularly reliable,” she said ruefully.

“Really? You think I’m a Cylon?”

Laura shrugged. “Until ten minutes ago, I wouldn’t have thought that having zombies in the Fleet was a possibility. So yeah, I don’t know what to think, except that Cylons could be useful in dealing with this problem on the Hitei Khan.”

Bill patted the section of couch next to him, trying to get her to sit down; her movements were making him nervous. “You know,” he started once she sat, “Captain Agathon has let me in on a foolproof way to test for whether someone is a Cylon.”

“Really,” she drawled. “And yet you didn’t deign to share it with me until right now. What, pray tell, is this foolproof Cylon detector, and how did Captain Agathon find out about it?”

Bill blushed, a phenomenon Laura had never witnessed before, and she grew apprehensive about what this test might entail. His lips began to move, but nothing came out. “Bill?”

Sheepishly, he leaned in and whispered the details into her ear.

“Oh my gods, Bill.”

“So you wanna find out once and for all?”

* * *

“Yeah Laura...you’re definitely not a Cylon.” He felt her inner muscles spasming around him as she let out a deep throaty moan. He trailed his fingers along the knobs of her decidedly non-glowing spine before letting his hands come to rest at her hips and giving a few more thrusts. “You wanna get on top and check me?”

She’d stopped moving entirely, her face collapsed upon a pillow, but when he withdrew from her body, she mustered the motivation to get up off her hands and knees and turned around to face him. “Okay.”

Bill sat on the edge of the rack and she climbed atop him, taking his still-hard cock deep inside. Their arms wrapped around one another, Laura bit the skin where shoulder met neck, her eyes trained down his broad back, waiting for a sign, all the while writhing on top of him.

She moved up and down in an increasing tempo, using her legs for leverage against the rack’s mattress while Bill braced his feet against the ground to push up against her. “You close?” she panted. “I want to make you come.”

Bill let his hands come up the sides of her body to cup her bare breasts. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I’m close.”

“Gods, Bill. What if you really are a Cylon?” She ground harder against his hips, seeking a second release.

“Then you’re really screwed,” he joked. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, raking her fingers through his short hair as she continued moving. “Gods damn it, Bill. _Come_.”

The sound of her voice, so firmly authoritative, was the final element needed to push him over the edge. “Gods yes, Laura...watch my back now.”

He pumped into her a few more times, achieving his release with a groan as her chin dug into his shoulder.

“Nope, not a Cylon,” she announced, climbing off him and into the rack, reclining properly. She rolled onto her side and motioned for him to join her with a crook of her finger. “Come here.”

He complied, turning to face her. He draped an arm over her waist and leaned in to give her a kiss-- of gratitude, of reassurance, maybe of something more, before taking a breath and forcing himself to bring up their urgent business. “So what are we going to do about this?”

“We take the Cylon in the brig,” she said, “and we board that ship.”

 

* * *  
 _Hitei Khan_

Rachel was glad for her small size as she crouched lower in her hiding place in the ventilation system. She could see bodies beginning to move through the grate, unaccompanied by the normal sounds of human interaction; there was some sort of sinister wake-up call at work here. These things were no longer her shipmates and co-workers, she'd figured that out quickly enough the first time one of them blindly groped at her without speaking. She was fairly sure that a bullet to the brain was the only effective way of dispatching the reanimated things, but all she had at her disposal was a sharpened screwdriver with which to defend herself.

She again cursed the asshole foreman who had closed the hatch to the cockpit in her face, yelling something about being full up. Once it had become clear that something really wrong was going on, people sought refuge and tried to convince the ship's captain to let them evacuate to another ship. So far, though, all they'd been "evacuating" was anyone or anything that showed some sign of zombie contamination: lack of speech, a thousand-yard stare. The captain had unfortunately been among them, creating a vacuum of authority that had never been resolved.

She had to get off the ship. She couldn't fly, so that meant someone would have to come get her. Problem was, comm equipment was all at the bridge, and she was locked out.

Rachel thought she had a pretty good knack for self-preservation. She had, after all, escaped Picon immediately after the nuclear attacks began, though she did ultimately end up on one of the least desirable ships of the Fleet in terms of working conditions. But she was young, and strong, and determined. Not only that, but she seemed to be one of a rapidly dwindling number of non-zombies left in the main compartment of the ship.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she never felt the thing approaching until it was biting at her temple. After a brief struggle, she collapsed lifelessly to the deck, her small body sliding down through the ventilation chute.

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Pilots’ Duty Locker_

Kara Thrace threw the dice across the table and watched them tumble over assorted loot before coming to rest on double sixes. "Yes!" she cried. "Pay up, Apollo."

Lee Adama groaned. "I'm out after this. You cleaned up, Kara."

"I'm out," Karl Agathon said, unwrapping a sucker and popping it in his mouth. Gaeta, too, threw up his hands in surrender.

Dee poured Lee another two fingers of rotgut and smiled sympathetically. "So what do you all make of this thing with the tylium ship?" she asked casually. She'd been in CIC when the cryptic distress call came through, but didn't rate inclusion in the strategy sessions that followed, to her mild consternation.

Kara bit her lip as she concentrated on sweeping up her winnings from the table. "I think the Old Lady's got the right of it. We've gotta board the ship, kill whatever's causing the problem."

"I still think we'd be better off blowing the thing up and taking our chances with finding a new tylium source," Gaeta said snottily. "Exposing the Fleet to zombies is worse than splitting the Fleet up while we look for raw tylium."

"The Daru Mozu is still out of commission, and will be indefinitely," Lee protested. "We don't even have enough tylium on hand to send the Raptors out to look for more."

"The zombie ship's got it all, huh." Dee looked depressed. "We'll never get to Earth."

Kara had stashed her wad of cubits and coins in her sweatshirt pocket and leaned on the table, resting her chin in her hands contemplatively. "The thing is," she said slowly, "zombies aren't smart. They're unthinking automatons, incapable of independent action beyond their quest for flesh. I think the right strike squad could take out however many of those things there are on the ship."

"Starbuck, how do you know so much about this?" Dee asked, her eyes narrowed.

"It's in the Scriptures,” Kara said. Her voice took on an uncharacteristic somber tone as she quoted: “'And the golem became reanimated through the work of the daemon, and sought flesh; but it neither spoke, nor thought on its own accord.'"

“I wonder if zombies are drawn to Cylon flesh," Karl mused.

"You'd know more about that than us, Helo," Gaeta snickered, elbowing Dee.

Karl was undeterred by Gaeta’s dig. “No, really. If the zombies only want to eat humans, maybe Sharon could help.”

“You just want your lady-thing out of the brig before she pops, Helo,” Kara accused. She counted quickly on her fingers; Sharon had to be at least seven months pregnant, Kara figured.

“Yeah? So what if I do,” Karl said, pushing his chair back with a screech and standing up. “She’s the mother of my child.”

Dee and Gaeta shook their heads at one another; they’d seen this particular issue debated a few too many times. Lee spoke up, changing the subject.

“Well, if the Admiral orders a strike, I’m going to volunteer for the boarding party,” Lee said, puffing his chest out presumptuously. He threw back the rest of his drink. “Kara will, too.” He looked at Starbuck, expectant for confirmation.

Helo frowned. “Yeah, why is it that when anything goes wrong, the Old Man calls on you two?”

Smirking, Lee explained. “It’s, like, our thing. Running security on Cloud Nine during the Vice Presidential election, figuring out how to deal with the black market on the Prometheus, the plot to assassinate Admiral Cain...”

“Lee!” Kara smacked the side of his head with her open palm. “That was a secret, you jerk! And you pussied out of it, anyway!”

“Whoops,” Lee muttered into his drink.

“Helo, I don’t know the answer to your question, except to say, I’m Galactica’s Top Gun and you know I can out-shoot you in target practice or on the pyramid court.” She looked back at Lee. “But yeah, I’m in.”

Helo’s eyes shone with hope and he pulled the lollipop out of his mouth. “Sharon could fly the Raptor!” he offered.

Dee rose and headed for the hatch. “Good luck with that,” she said scornfully over her shoulder at the three of them. “Coming, Felix?”

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Admiral Adama’s Quarters_

Laura rapped perfunctorily on the hatch to the Admiral’s quarters before entering, immediately kicking off her shoes and placing her briefcase next to them. “Hello?” she called. “You here?”

Bill emerged from the head, clean-shaven and clad in camouflage. “Laura.” He nodded at her. “Can I get you a drink?”

“That would be wonderful,” she said, settling into his couch with a sigh. “I just got done with a press conference discussing my executive order that all the ships in the Fleet immediately eject any corpses into space so they don’t reanimate and infect the rest of their ships. Tory guesses that’s what must have happened on the Hitei Khan, but that didn’t make it any easier to try to explain. People are furious about being locked down on their ships and reporters were asking hysterical questions about ‘cannibalism’ in the Fleet.” Scoffing, she added, “Doesn’t anyone know the difference between cannibals and zombies anymore?” She accepted the tumbler of amber liquid gratefully and took a graceful sip. As she lowered the glass, however, her movements froze as she seemed to notice his appearance for the first time.

“Bill,” she said slowly, “why are you wearing your field uniform?”

He hesitated. “I’ve decided to send Kara and Lee to resolve the problem on the Hitei Khan.”

“Your son, and your surrogate daughter,” she said. “Why would you take that risk? Why can’t you send one of your other pilots? Maybe that Hot Dog character. And that young woman who usually flies my transport. Lieutenant Edmondson. She’s very competent.”

“Lee and Kara are the best shots in the Fleet,” he said stubbornly. “They’re my crack team.” He sat down heavily beside her, taking a sip of his own drink.

“There’s more,” Laura said with a sigh, placing her hand on his thigh and tracing the patterns on the material, “isn’t there?”

Bill nodded and turned to face her. “I’m going with them. I don’t know how this happened, but it’s my responsibility to restore order and eliminate the zombie threat.”

Laura set her glass down on the table. “You can’t let them get you,” she said seriously, her pale eyes round with fear. “I want to be the only one eating any part of you.” She lifted his hand up to her mouth and sank her teeth into the fleshy skin between his thumb and forefinger.

He grasped her hand with the one she’d just bitten. “I’ll be fine,” he reassured her. “I’m taking the Sharon in the brig with us. Kara agreed with our theory that the zombies might not be attracted to her since she’s not human, so hopefully Sharon can back us up while we take out those zombie frakkers.”

Laura’s face was sad, but her irises now held playful glints among the sparks of fear. “I better check one more time whether you’re a Cylon, then.” She moved to straddle his lap.

Bill groaned as her hands moved across his chest, unfastening buttons and seeking contact with flesh. “Laura...not now...”

“No time like the present,” she insisted before leaning down to kiss him.

He shifted uncomfortably beneath her. “No, really,” he gasped once he freed his lips from hers. “Lee and Kara are on their way here right now.”

The tell-tale sound of spinning metal validated his excuse, and Laura slithered off him with a frustrated sigh. Kara bounded into the room, followed by a more reserved Lee.

“Ready to kill some zombies, boss?” Kara asked, tossing Bill a shotgun. “We loaded up the Raptor with ammo and extra guns. Apparently a bullet to the brain is the main thing that will stop these things, so make sure you aim for the head.”

Bill just shot her a look that said, ‘obviously.’

“Lee picked out a bunch of sidearms for us,” Kara continued, undaunted. “We figured we might not have a lot of time to reload on this op, so we should all carry four or five guns.”

“Yes,” the Admiral stated simply.

“Sharon is ready to go whenever we are,” Lee offered. “She’s being held under guard in the hangar bay right now.”

“Helo’s pretty hopeful about all this, sir,” Kara noted. “You really going to let her out of the brig if this op goes right?”

Bill’s face remained impassive as he looked toward Laura. “That’s a decision I’ll make in conjunction with the President at an appropriate time.” He bent down and started fiddling with the laces of his boots. “Besides killing the undead,” he started before straightening back up and re-buttoning his jacket, “our mission is also to rescue as many of the survivors as we can. Madam President, can your office coordinate the evacuation of a smaller ship so that we can quarantine any Hitei Khan survivors on it? Perhaps the Daru Mozu, since the tylium workers may be able to contribute to the ongoing efforts to repair the refining machinery on that ship?”

“That won’t be a problem, Admiral,” she said smoothly. “I’ll have my staff start on that immediately.”

Bill walked over to his desk and took a small silver lighter out of a drawer. Laura noticed a flash of recognition on Lee’s face as Bill slipped it into his pocket. "Okay, kids. Let’s go kill some zombies.”

Lee and Kara stood at attention as Bill walked slowly toward the hatch. He gave Laura a long, soulful look.

“Good hunting,” Laura said unhappily. “All of you.”

 

* * *  
 _Hitei Khan_

Sharon eased the Raptor into the Hitei Khan’s landing bay, but still managed to skid across the metal plating. Bill grimaced. “Boomer,” he warned.

“Haven’t exactly been keeping my skills sharp in the brig, sir,” she defended herself as she went through her post-flight checklist.

Kara and Lee had donned riot gear and were offering the same to Bill and Sharon. Bill accepted his, but Sharon looked at the bulletproof vest and helmet disdainfully. “I’ll be fine,” she said, patting her swollen belly. “Those things can’t hurt me.”

Bill nodded at Lee, who grudgingly handed over a holster with two handguns to Sharon. “Give her a few extra clips, too, Lee,” Adama ordered as he cocked his shotgun.

They tentatively made their way down the ramp and onto the deck, looking around warily. There didn’t seem to be anyone or anything in the landing bay.

Suddenly Bill saw movement out of the corner of his eye; a flash of whitish gray, heading toward the hatch into the interior of the ship. “Two o’clock!” he hissed to the team.

Starbuck raised her sidearm and took a shot. “Straight through the back of the head!” she crowed after the thing fell to the ground. Lee rewarded her with a high five.

“We’ve gotta get in there and find the rest of them,” Bill said, determined. “Cover my rear.”

Lee took out two more automatons in quick succession before they made it into the ship’s interior compartment. “Remember to keep an eye out for anyone who can still speak intelligibly,” Bill warned in a low voice. “We want to rescue any survivors, if possible.”

Kara took out the handheld device showing a schematic of the ship and found their current location. “Let’s do a sweep from stern, portside to bow, and come back down the starboard side before going to the bridge and seeing about survivors.” She turned and started heading down a corridor, leading the strike team as they quietly and quickly headed aft.

There were zombies around every other corner, in some cases not yet reanimated. Those were the easiest to kill for good, by destroying their brain as they lay defenseless. The active zombies, while disturbing to look upon, didn’t move quickly and were only marginally menacing when they advanced upon the team, who dispatched several dozen with ease.

Bill wished he’d worn earplugs. The decibels generated by the constant discharge of their weapons, amplified in the narrow hallway, made a displeasing melody along with the occasional ricochet of errant bullets against bulkhead.

“Where are they all coming from?” Lee wondered. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it.”

“The outbreak’s been going on for a few days, Lee,” Kara shouted as she hit a zombie between the eyes, splattering his brains against the bulkhead. “Pretty much everyone who didn’t barricade themselves would be dead by now.”

Bill was focused on shooting zombies as he held guns in both hands, firing off alternating shots, when Lee cried, “Sharon, watch out!” The thing closing in on Sharon looked like she had been young in life, too small to be working here and wearing torn childlike overalls. Even with the ragged clothing hanging off her, it was clear to see that she’d died in a fall of some kind; her arms swung at her sides at unnatural angles and she hobbled on a lame left leg that looked to be twisted fully around. The thing moaned through bared teeth and reached out, yellowed nails gleaming in the low light, as Sharon turned around and registered the threat.

Lee leapt between the two and pushed them apart, sending Sharon rolling to the ground before he kicked the little girl zombie’s grotesque legs out from under her and blew her head off with his shotgun. “You bitch,” he snarled. Bill held a hand out to Sharon and helped her to her feet.

“You okay?” Bill asked her, concerned. “That thing didn’t touch you, did it?”

“I’m fine,” Sharon said shortly, brushing off her oversized sweatsuit before touching her fingers to her shoulder and probing the skin there. “She didn’t get me. Sure got close, though.”

Lee rubbed his arm absently through a tear in the material of his jacket but didn’t say anything, just re-loaded his shotgun and pulled his riot shield down over his eyes.

“I thought these things weren’t supposed to go after Cylons,” Kara complained, bashing a zombie in the stomach with the butt of her gun before turning it around and shooting the thing in the head.

“We’ve got bigger things to worry about than the precise mechanics of zombification,” Bill said, urging them on.

They entered the main bunk area, and found it overrun by the undead. “What the hell,” Bill grumbled. “Such a waste.” The bunk area was a huge rectangular room. Bill motioned for his party to line up against the shorter wall nearest the door. “Let’s line up and start strafing,” he said with a sigh as the zombies began to advance.

A spray of bullets met the threat, and the strike team’s aim remained true, as Sharon, Lee, Kara, and Bill stood shoulder to shoulder and unleashed their firepower against the enemy. A few minutes later and it was over, with the team none the worse for the wear.

“We’re done here,” Bill announced. “We just need to hit the machine rooms at this point, and then check the cockpit.”

The machine rooms yielded nearly as many zombies as the bunks. Mentally calculating, Bill figured they must have killed nearly all of the 414 souls Laura had told him had been present on the Hitei Khan before the outbreak, which saddened him. It wasn’t looking like there would be many people left to rescue, after all. Getting the ship back might be their only consolation.

When they reached the captain’s area, composed of modest quarters, a small separate head, and a communications bridge and command area meant for a few staffers, it became clear that his fear was realized. No one responded to their knocks against the barricaded hatch, so Kara pulled out a detonator and blew it open as they took cover down the hallway. The blast still knocked Lee and Sharon to the ground, though Bill held steady in a crouched position against the bulkhead.

“Hello?” Kara called after the dust had settled.

“Brains,” something growled back.

“Oh, frak me,” she sighed. “Weapons at the ready!”

Visibility was poor as they took aim at a smaller group of vacant-eyed corpses. "Hello?" Kara yelled again over the gunfire. "Anyone in here who's not undead?"

Bill threw off a coverall-clad thing, which was quickly neutralized by Sharon. "Only a couple more," she said, looking around. "They're all gone, though. Dead and infected."

Kara shot the remaining zombies in the head with relish before any of them could get within ten feet of the group. "Good target practice," she said, holstering two of the three guns she'd been using.

"I'm gonna have to bring a crew of knuckledraggers over here to clean up the bodies," Bill thought out loud. "Any ideas how I should assign that duty, Lee?"

"Dice," said Lee.

Bill laughed despite himself. "Leave it to chance...okay, maybe not."

"Not to get complacent, but I think that's it," Kara said. "Want me to stay here and stand guard till you get the cleanup crew over here?"

Bill nodded. "Okay, Starbuck stays here. Sharon, you can fly me and Lee back to Galactica." He handed Kara an extra sidearm and box of bullets. "Grab your gun and..."

"...bring in the zombies," she finished, grinning. "Yes, sir!" She tried to high-five Lee, but he seemed distracted and made a weak effort resulting in a flaccid slap. "Lame, Lee." Kara saluted the Admiral and shot Sharon a slightly dirty look as the three turned to leave.

Sharon's landing on Galactica's hangar bay went a little more smoothly than the previous one, and she turned to the Admiral, who was sitting on the ECO's bench, before unstrapping her harness and beginning the post-flight checklist.

"Am I to return to the brig, sir?" she bit out.

Bill looked at her levelly before allowing his gaze to drift down to her protruding stomach.

"You've served us well in this mission," he said. "You can stay with Helo from now until your baby’s born, though I'll be assigning a Marine to you. For your safety."

Sharon smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. "Thank you, sir."

"I'll be in my quarters getting cleaned up," Bill said to Sharon and Lee. "Let’s meet in the ward room in forty minutes."

Lee bobbed his head slightly in assent as Sharon scurried off.

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Admiral Adama’s Quarters_

"Laura?" Bill called as he stepped into the familiar comfort of his quarters.

"Bill!" A whirl of black wool and white silk launched itself into his arms.

"Hey," he said, supporting her bottom with his hands as she wrapped her legs tighter around his waist.

"You made it," she breathed into his neck. "Bill, I was so worried. I could hardly concentrate on what was going on in CIC. I came here as soon as your Raptor was cleared to land."

Bill didn't speak, just held her close as her legs slid back down to the ground and some of the stress of the past few hours began to melt away. "Come on," he husked, leading her to his rack. "We've got half an hour before we're due for the post-op briefing."

Laura's eyes lit up and she began unbuttoning her blouse. They both shed garments as they walked toward the back of his quarters, leaving an incriminating trail behind them.

"Was it absolutely awful?" she asked once she was reclining, naked on his rack, and he hovered over her. "Bill, lose the rest your clothes."

He complied, stripping off his tanks and boxers before lowering himself over her body. "I killed eighty-six zombies for you, Laura," he whispered in her ear as he insinuated a thigh between hers and let the soft skin of his length caress her creamy flesh.

She reached down between them to stroke his growing hardness. "And you got our tylium ship back, too. I'm so very impressed," she purred.

He crushed his mouth to hers, his tongue savoring the sweetness of her lips, teeth nipping at her lips as she writhed beneath him. She moaned his name, which he took as his cue to move his hand from its grip in her hair to seek instead the juncture of her thighs. She was warm and wet for him. He teased her entrance with his fingers, then moved to her clit, circling it with a light touch, as his tongue made the same motion around her peaked nipple.

Laura arched up into his touch. "Now, Bill," she said throatily, pumping her hand along his shaft, tugging him toward her slightly.

He sheathed himself by her command, and they both exhaled together in relief as her body accommodated him.

Bill began to move against her, bracing himself against the rack above her head. "Frak," he groaned, but it was an expression of gratitude, not a curse. This was just like old times for Bill: coming back from a mission, high on the elation of its successful completion and randy as hell, heading straight to his rack. It was a feeling he’d encountered far too seldom in the past forty years.

Laura hummed contentedly. His lazy thrusts were enjoyable, but not quite sufficient in themselves to bring her to where she wanted to be, so she grabbed his hand from the side of her head and moved it down to caress her clit as he slid in and out of her. He gamely stroked the bundle of nerves with his thumb, eliciting delighted gasps from his lover.

Suddenly she stilled.

"Something wrong, Laura?"

Her brow furrowed and she clapped her hand over his mouth. "Shhh."

There was definitely a shuffling sound coming from the living area. Bill gently withdrew from Laura and sat back on his haunches, his still-erect penis bobbing sadly between his thighs.

"There is something in here," Laura whispered, her eyes wide with terror. She rolled to her side, reaching for the holster he'd placed on the nightstand when he stripped his clothes off. She took one of the two guns.

"Gimme the other one," Bill hissed through gritted teeth.

A figure appeared in the door frame before she could comply.

"Dad. Brains..."

"Oh my gods!" exclaimed Laura, jumping out of the rack. "Oh my gods, oh my gods, Bill!"

The thing that had once been Lee clambered toward the rack, his gait unsteady. "Dad. Braaaaaains."

Bill had managed to stand but remained frozen in place, horrified and transfixed as he tried to think about how this could have happened. The closest call with one of the things on the Hitei Khan had been when the girl zombie had practically gotten on top of Sharon. Lee had gotten the thing with a point-blank shotgun blast, but not before he’d pushed Sharon out of the way...had the thing gotten at Lee’s arm with those claws of hers? His thoughts were interrupted by the jarring retort of gunfire.

"Damn, missed," Laura muttered. She took another shot at Lee, but the bullet glanced his sallow cheek and went on to shatter the glass framing a formal photo of the Fleet's military and civilian leaders.

The sound of the glass breaking sprang Bill into action. He grabbed the remaining gun from the side table and spun the chamber open. "No bullets. Frak."

The Lee-thing gazed blankly at his father's nakedness, and Bill knew his son was truly gone from the lack of revulsion or even any sort of reaction at all to walking in on his father banging the President. Bill wrapped his hands around Laura's, steadying her shaking grip, and squeezed the trigger.

Laura gave a strangled cry as Lee fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. Bill gathered her close, making shushing sounds into her hair, as much for his own benefit as for hers.

"I guess we didn't quite contain the zombie ship in time, after all," he told Laura, his voice cracking with guilt.

Laura steered him over to the rack and they both eased down, still looking at the corpse on the floor. “Oh, Bill...” She rubbed his shoulder and realized with a start that they were both still naked. She stood back up and ran to the closet for their bathrobes, looking over her shoulder the whole time as if she expected the thing to rise yet again. She shrugged into her white robe before draping Bill’s brown one over his shoulders. His chest was heaving with silent sobs.

“I am so, so sorry,” she said quietly. “But that thing wasn’t your son.”

“Either way, he’s gone all the same.”

“He was very brave to go on that mission for the good of the Fleet.”

“He was.” Bill’s head fell into his hands as he blocked out the sight of the fallen pilot and the spray of viscera fanning out around his skull. “This is my fault,” he mumbled.

Laura didn’t try to argue with him, just rubbed his back as she eyed the comm unit and considered calling CIC to ascertain whether Lee had infected anyone else on his way to this final confrontation. “Bill, do you have any idea what happened?”

He sat up straighter and his eyes narrowed. “I’ve got a guess. Can you call Cottle, have him send some orderlies to take this down to the morgue?”

She nodded and he began to get dressed. “I’ll be back shortly. Keep that sidearm close. I’ve gotta go to the pilots’ duty locker and take care of something.”

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Pilots’ Duty Locker_

The Admiral found her in Helo’s bunk, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her stomach. “Sharon,” he said sharply. “Did that zombie touch you? Bite or scratch you?”

She’d shaken her head, puzzled. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Because Lee definitely got infected,” he said tonelessly, “and I think it happened when he was pushing that zombie off you.”

Sharon gaped silently and stood up, placing one hand on her lower back; the day’s exertions had taken a toll, and she was exhausted. “Lee hardly said a word after that happened,” she said slowly. “He was less than coordinated when we were leaving the Raptor. But I’m still myself. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t infected.”

He cleared his throat. “I want you off this ship as soon as possible. You did a good thing by helping us today. I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but the President is still considering terminating your pregnancy or separating you from your baby.”

Sharon frowned and placed her hands protectively under her bump, but didn’t say anything.

Bill continued, hoping Laura would forgive him for doing this. She’d been so conflicted over what to do about the hybrid child, but he wasn’t sure that she would ever fully understand the strength of his feeling about separating parents from their child.

"Take a Raptor," he said. “If you leave now, you’ll have a chance to have your baby, live in peace. A chance; I don’t know if you’re infected, and I really don’t want you to stick around long enough to find out. Take Helo with you if you can convince him.”

She nodded bravely. “He’ll come. But where in the worlds are we supposed to go?”

 

* * *  
 _Galactica, Hangar Bay_

"Sharon, where are we going?" Karl couldn't understand why his wife was dragging him by the hand out to the hangar bay, instead of letting him frak her senseless in the duty locker after she’d found him in CIC and said he should follow her, “Admiral’s orders.”

She just shook her head and quickened their pace, adjusting the overstuffed laundry sack she had slung over her shoulder. "You'll see."

He followed her up the ramp into the Raptor she'd just brought back from the Hitei Khan. Even after she tossed him a flight suit, he was still uncomprehending. Sharon noticed his reticence.

"Do you love me?"

"Of course!" he sputtered. “And our baby.”

"Do you trust me?"

"With my life," he vowed.

"Good. That's really good, Helo," she said, maneuvering the Raptor out of the bay and handing her ECO the slip of paper with the coordinates the Admiral had given her. She jumped the ship away as soon as she’d gotten far enough from Galactica to do so and Helo gave her the signal that the FTL drive was ready. As the familiar feeling of jumping through hyperspace settled heavily over her, she clutched an engraved silver lighter and hoped that Kobol would be more welcoming this time around.  



End file.
